“Now, some people think that the staying wasn’t strong enough, and the sides caved in on that account; others, again, talk about Kidd’s ghost baffling these diggers; but, from what was discovered afterwards, I feel perfectly sure that they themselves somehow let in the water of the sea into the hole by a drain or channel underground that Kidd himself had made. I think those knocks on the chest with the crowbar loosened some stopper, and the water poured in at once. It was this rush of sea water that destroyed everything, and made the hole cave in altogether. As to the drain, that was a contrivance of Kidd’s to prevent the treasure from being dug up by outsiders. He had it made underground from the shore of the island at low-water mark to the bottom of the money-hole. He himself, or any one in the secret, would know how to dig and get the treasure; but any one who didn’t know the secret would be sure to do something that would let in the sea water. And that’s just what these first diggers did. “Well, after this nothing was done for a long time. These two, father and son, went home, and for a while they kept the whole business a secret; but after some years the old man died, and the son married, and so the whole story leaked out, till everybody knew all about it. Everybody went then to see the place, and the story soon got to be as well known as the alphabet all over the bay; and I won’t swear but that some additions were made to the story as it passed from mouth to mouth, for that would only be natural, after all; but at any rate, that story lived, and people didn’t forget the treasure on Oak Island. And so time passed, and the son died at last, and the grandson grew up, and this one thought that he would make a dash at the treasure. This was as much as forty years after the first digging. He went with a few friends, and they tried to dig, but couldn’t. The money-hole remained as it had been left by the first diggers,--all sand, and gravel, and water,--more like a quicksand than anything else. They put a pump in it, and set it to work, but couldn’t do anything that way. So they gave it up.